Since the days of my middle life
I was deeply devoted to Tao.
Recently I came to live
in the mountains of Chung-nan.
Oftentimes--with joy in my heart--
Alone, I roam here and there.
It is a wonderful thing
That I am aware of myself.
When the streamlet ends my trip
I settle down and catch
The moment of rising mists.
Now and then I meet
A furrowed dweller of the woods.
We chat and laugh;
Never do we want to go home.

-Wang Wei

**

When it was dark, I reached the village of Shih-hao.
Late at night an officer came to recruit men.
The old man in the house climbed over the wall and fled.
The old woman opened the door.
How the angry officer was raging!
How bitterly the woman was crying!
I heard what the old woman said:
"I had three sons for the defense of the City of Yeh.
Only one of them sent me a letter.
The other two boys were killed in battle.
The one who remained may not live long.
The dead are gone forever.
There are no more men in the house
Except my grandson who is still fed on milk.
Because of him his mother stays with us.
However, she has no whole skirt to go out.
Although I am old and have no strength,
Let me go with you, officer,
To immediately answer the urgent call from Ho-yang.
At least I can do some cooking for the soldiers."
Later in the night their conversation stopped.
What I heard was something like sobbing.
At daybreak I started out again on my journey.
I could only say "Good-bye" to the old man.

-Tu Fu


**
These poems were taken from "Creativity and Taoism" by Chang Chung-yuan

earlier in the day cats recognized dogs as heroic figures matter put into their own hands like chefs at a rodeo wandering between fences and dirt ball clowns trying to pull one over the bull riders and friends of the bull riders otherwise known as the blue riders in german expressionist talk the wiggle puppies or the fun buddies a lamp with no light bulb as good as a grey goose a hedge fund prepaid and ready to matriculate and ten other way to name your baby circa field 1937 the plains spread out before the paupers and home rehabilitation projects as seen on tv the teeth puncturing an already raw wound no money to brittney spears commercial clad all wheel drive muck a luck tee pee wendigo tank track but a rolled out new line of far superior soap stone products a massive surge of energy building and bludgeoning the work release program circa cricket teams massively over wrought metal sculptures and our dreams yes our dreams to be corporate sculptors making large aluminum waste products for us to walk around and seemingly to bother us not to make sense but pulmonary fibrosis circumstantial message to god reads if he did it hello of course he hates me hats off to the victor and motorolla deluxe reference book editions of limited leather bound tooth detectors and detective wandering between missile silos looking for monographed copies of not one weasel court but four seventy three hoboken avenue nobody saw us pick a new renegade cop blaster give it some time he'll come around said the most of the hosts brain wave usually after so much blah blah i'll come around and say something some clarification of perspective and where the meteorite originated from but instead halle bop i waited on the roof for aliens in the summer of eighty three barely old enough to talk or formulate thoughts like mostly we've lost our nerve and other barely legible wanton plus weight hold overs um yeah i'm just tired barely keeping me eyes open but will sit up a little for a drink water

Today I got a text message asking "why no blog, dog?" and I replied "time and materials" which maybe seems like a very text messagey kind of exchange but I think the question is a good one and not that I'm going to attempt to explain anything because that would be a strike against our good judgment but for the last fifteen minutes my thumb has been twitching. Have you ever had a twitching thumb? I don't know what it means but I'll proceed to diagram my day spent morning early got up at seven put on shirt/shoes/packed bag and went to get into the car pool which worked it's quite remarkable I think the carpool system here in the bay area where strangers will drive you free of charge over the bridge which is faster and cheaper than any other form of transportation and they do it because it's much much faster like today where the highway was backed up for miles and the carpool lane was kind of backed up but not nearly as bad as the rest of the lanes regardless we got there alright and was dropped off at the curb of 1st and Harrison from an Audi A5 the man was listening to some kind of christian music which wasn't as bad as it sounds, probably, regardless I went and spent the next three hours in the speaking lab helping some international students mostly Koreans mind their upcoming presentations and talked about cats and dogs and then took a break where I ate a bag of chips then onto the writing lab where I helped more international students with some writing issues, two essays and an autobiography three hours later I waited an hour then met with the philosophy study group where I helped one student from Jordan work on his essay and then that was it I came home. It's been a while since I've touched the blog because I like to think I've been so busy but I'm not sure that's it. After all those little story posts I sort of got confused as to why I was writing thinking that my job was to write little stories and when I didn't have any little stories to tell I didn't have a job to do but that's not true I'll just post whatever no pressure but really I've been quite stressed out with school that is teaching this semester which is strange because you'd think that after a couple semesters it would get easier and maybe it has but instead it feels harder the ties that bind solidifying and this is what is difficult for me staying on one thing and instead of expanding horizontally from place to place getting a little bit of everything instead its concentrating on one thing and sticking with it that is difficult I think that is maybe what has happened this semester the long term possibility manifesting itself in the form of relationships with co-workers and students that necessarily move past the passing through stage and the conversations need to progress I mean you can only ask someone where they're from a couple times before its necessary to talk about something else like the increasingly complex web of expectations built up from repeated interactions and alarmingly enough the possibility that people can know you.